MAMMALIA—MAN. . 5] 
while yet in their youth. Their nose is short and flat, their eyes are little, 
and sunk in the head; their cheek bones are high; the lower part of their 
visage is narrow; their chin is long and prominent; their teeth are long 
and straggling ; their eyebrows are so large as to cover the eyes; their eye- 
lids are thick ; their face is broad and flat; their complexion is tawny; and 
their hair is black. They have but little beard, have thick thighs, and short 
legs, and, though but of middling stature, they yet are remarkably strong 
and robust. The ugliest of them are the Calmucks, in whose appearance 
there seems to be something frightful. They are all wanderers; and their 
only shelter is that of a tent made of hair or skins. Their food is horse- 
flesh and camel-flesh, either raw, or a little sodden between the horse and 
the saddle. They eat also fish dried in the sun. Their most common 
drink is mare’s milk, fermented with millet ground into meal. They all 
have the head shaved, except a tuft of hair on the top, which they let grow 
sufficiently long to form into tresses on each side of the face. The women, 
who are as deformed as the men, wear their hair, which they bind up with 
bits of copper, and other ornaments of the same nature. 
Some travellers tell us, that the limbs of the Curvese are well proportion- 
ed, that their body is large and fat, their visage large and round, their eyes 
small, their eyebrows large, their eyelids turned upwards, their nose short 
and flat; that, as for their beard, which is black, upon the chin there is very 
little, and upon each lip there are not more than seven or eight prickles: 
that those who inhabit the southern provinces of the empire are more 
brown and tawny than the others; that, in color, they resemble the natives 
of Mauritania, and the more swarthy Spaniards; but that those who inhabit 
the middle provinces are as fair as the Germans. 
Le Gentel assures us, that the Chinese women do every thing in their 
power to make their eyes appear little, and oblong; that, for this purpose, 
it is aconstant practice with the little girls, from the instruction of the 
mother, forcibly to extend their eyelids; and that, with the addition of a 
nose thoroughly compressed and flattened, of ears long, large; open, and 
pendant, they are accounted complete beauties. He adds, that their com- 
plexion is delicate, their lips are of a fine vermilion, their mouth is well 
proportioned, their hair is very black; but that, by the use of paint, they so 
greatly injure their skin, that before the age of thirty they have all the 
appearance of old age. 
So strongly do the Japanese resemble the Chinese, that we can hardly 
scruple to rank them in the same class. They only differ from them in 
being more yellow, or more brown. In general, their stature is contracted, 
their face as well as their nose is broad and flat, their hair is black, and 
their beard 1s little more than perceptible. They are haughty, fond of war, 
tull of dexterity and vigor, civil and obliging, smooth-tongued, and courte- 
ous, but fickle and vain. With astonishing patience, and even almost 
regardless of them, they sustain hunger, thirst, cold, heat, fatigue. and all 
